Norman Foster
From Freepedia
Norman Robert Foster, Baron Foster of Thames Bank, OM (born 1 June 1935) is a British architect.
Foster was born in Manchester and educated at the University of Manchester and at Yale University. He worked for the visionary Buckminster Fuller before meeting with Richard Rogers, creating Team 4 and in 1967 Foster Associates.
His designs were originally a stylish, machine influenced high-tech but he has moved away from this to a more sublime, more acceptable sharp-edged modernity.
He is known to some in the UK - pejoratively - as an über- or superstar-architect, the accusation being that certain architects are given preferential status based on their fame.
Projects
He has had an extremely successful career including:
- IBM Pilot Head Office, Cosham, England (1970 – 1971)
- Willis Faber and Dumas Headquarters, Ipswich (1970 – 1974)
- Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts at University of East Anglia in Norwich
- Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt
- HSBC headquarters building and the Hong Kong International Airport in Hong Kong
- Terminal building at Stansted Airport
- Metro of Bilbao, Spain
- Lionel Robbins Library renovation, London School of Economics
- Carre d'Art, Nîmes, France (1993)
- Redevelopment of the Great Court of the British Museum (1999)
- Millennium Bridge in London (1999)
- Reichstag redevelopment in Berlin (1999)
- Greater London Authority Building - London City Hall (2000)
- Expo MRT Station at Singapore (2001)
- La Poterie metro station, Rennes, France (2001)
- J Sainsbury headquarters, Holborn Circus, London (2001)
- 30 St Mary Axe - Swiss Re headquarters (2003)
- The Sage Gateshead (2004)
- Millau Viaduct - France (2004)
- National Police Memorial - The Mall, London (2005)
- Library of the Philological Faculty at Free University of Berlin, Germany (2005)
He was knighted in 1990 and appointed to the Order of Merit in 1997. In 1999 he was created a life peer. Foster is known by the British tabloid newspapers as "Lord Wobbly", due to structural problems with his Millennium Bridge. He has been criticised for his treatment of an arts charity, the Couper Collection, located next door to his London offices and home. See article.
Norman Foster is the second UK architect to win the Stirling Prize twice: once for the American Hangar at the Imperial War Museum Duxford in 1998 and again for 30 St Mary Axe in 2004. In consideration of his whole portfolio, Foster was awarded the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1999.
Recently one of Norman Foster's senior project architects, Ken Shuttleworth, who was reponsible for some of Fosters best known buildings such as the GLA and the 'Gerkin', left to set up the architectural practice Make [1] Some people believe that Shuttleworth was the driving force behind Foster in recent years.
See also
External links
Categories: 1935 births | British architects | Pritzker Prize winners | Life peers | Members of the Order of Merit | Architects
